WASHINGTON - The House Republican leadership will set aside GOP campaign promises to repeal Obamacare outright in favor of piecemeal changes within the 906-page law, U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, a senior member of the House leadership, told the Houston Chronicle Friday.

The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee's panel on health care said the Republican-controlled House would target provisions that GOP lawmakers blame for driving up health care costs.

"Clearly our preference is a complete repeal and replacement of it," the veteran lawmaker said in an interview in his office on Capitol Hill. "But with the election, everyone understands that with this president that will not happen."

Targeted provisions include a tax on medical devices, an independent payments advisory board that could "ration" insurance reimbursements and incentives that allegedly encourage private businesses with more than 50 employees to drop employer-sponsored health care plans, Brady said.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is expected to permit the 233 House Republicans to vote on legislation to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that was adopted by majority Democrats in Congress in 2010 without a single GOP vote in the House and with a lone GOP vote in the Senate by then-Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. But the largely symbolic vote will merely "reflect how strongly our conference feels about it," Brady said.

President Barack Obama defended his signature domestic achievement during his successful re-election campaign in the face of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney's vow to begin repealing it on his first day in the Oval Office.

In a further blow to critics of the health care plan, the U.S. Supreme Court last June upheld the constitutionality of the law.

Pragmatism emerges

The apparent decision to forgo the knock-down, drag-out fight to repeal Obamacare promised during the fall campaign reflects a pragmatic tone emerging from the House GOP leadership.

Brady forecast there would be little wrangling, for example, over the upcoming vote to raise the $16.4 trillion ceiling on federal borrowing.

House Republicans who were largely marginalized during final White House-Senate negotiations to avert the so-called fiscal cliff also plan to deliver legislation this year that will seek tax reform, Medicare reform and Social Security reform, Brady said.

By adopting the planned legislation, the House will have a voice in any compromises negotiated by a House-Senate conference committee after competing versions of legislation are adopted by the House and Senate, Brady said.

Brady suggested tea party-backed lawmakers in the House would not pose a challenge to the leadership of the House speaker or the agenda favored by the entire GOP conference.

'It was a tough one'

Brady, who decisively defeated tea party challenger Larry Youngblood in the Texas GOP primary last May, was one of only four of the 22 Republicans in the Texas congressional delegation to vote in favor of the fiscal cliff compromise.

"You can't just stick your finger in the air and just follow the political winds of the moment if we want to tackle tough issues," he said.

Brady, who has taken heat from some supporters back home, said he backed the bipartisan legislation because it made permanent Bush-era tax cuts providing $3.6 trillion in tax relief over the next decade for 99 percent of Americans. The measure also ended the threat of the Alternative Minimum Tax hitting 27 million more taxpayers and the threat that most family-owned farms and business would have to pay higher inheritance taxes.

"It was a tough vote," said Brady, a former Chamber of Commerce executive in Texas who served in the Texas state legislature for six years before entering Congress. "But I didn't come up here to make easy votes. … You come up here for the tough ones."